Tags
compound exercises, crossfit beauty in strength, dieting, functional fitness, good fats, healthy-living, HIIT, holistic health and fitness, six pack, squats and deadlifts, superficial fitness
Are you one of those? You know, the shallow sorts. Who just goes to the gym to look a certain way. What’s your motivation? Health and fitness, or vain wants and mirror muscles? Are you one of those women who works out so that her derriere looks dishy in denims? Or are you the bicep curling beefcake? Not judging you, but fitness should never start or stop at looking a certain way.
Yes, we live in the world of instant gratification. Add to that, picture perfect physiology, preening and posing in the movies and ads. Billboards have boys who are buff and websites are full of wispy women. It’s a societal pressure to look a certain way, but this sort of approach, chasing the ideal symmetry of an idol you follow is FLAWED.
So ask yourself, why do you workout? What would you rather chase? Superficial symmetry? Or good health and baseline fitness that gets you through your daily chores with ease? Trust me if you choose the latter, your body will sculpt itself better than you can imagine.
Let’s start with the ladies
Each of us are built different. Workouts and diet plans designed for Jessica Biel might not work for you, or your out of shape colleague. And those women’s magazines that pimp the obnoxious orange juice diet for weight loss, Trust me it doesn’t work either.
Refusing your body of vital nutrients that it needs to build repair and ensure proper functioning is not fit or healthy. Plus, your body’s core function is SURVIVAL. The moment you starve, anything you eat post a long spell of fasting is turned into fat. Bottom line the body is happier in a feast (not donuts and soda sort) like situation, famine causes it to save its fuel and convert food to fat.
And then those boys who want to get buff.
So you see a movie star getting ripped to the bone for a movie role and suddenly you want a body like his. Next step you go off dietary fat to get your fat percent under 5 percent. For those who forgo fats, good fats produce testosterone and testosterone builds muscle. So no fat intake equals no muscle.
A little vanity doesn’t hurt anyone, but focusing all the energies on just looking a certain way will not make you better apart from retaining the same dress size. A little shift in your focus may help you look a certain way and also get fit in the real sense of the word.
1) Focus on athletics over aesthetics. Yes you maybe a jacked up jock but if you can’t open a jam jar you are a FAILURE! Much like this beefcake.
If you been just curling barbells and doing crunches ditch those exercises and start doing compound movements. Squats, deadlifts, presses pull ups to name a few. And yes I prescribe this to the ladies as well. Remember your body never works in isolation. Whether you are walking or squatting or running your body uses multiple muscles and joints. So essentially, you are evolutionary wired to use multiple muscles and joints no matter what movement is. Your training should contain a lot of compound exercises.
The more muscles you work, the more testosterone released hence you pack more muscle. And all you women worried about barbells and bulking up. Fret not since, you don’t produce enough testosterone even if you lift heavy you wouldn’t end up looking like lady hulk. Don’t believe me? Check these ladies, they squat lift and throw down things on a daily basis.
2) So once you move over to compound exercises. Try lifting heavy. Not the staple sets of 10 or 12 reps. Throw in one, three and five rep maxes. The heavier the load the more muscles worked, bigger the neuro muscular impact, more testosterone released and hence you pack up muscles faster than the bicep curling. You want true fitness, vary your workouts. Throw in more functional stuff run, sprint, lift, body weight movements mix it all up. Shock your body as often as you can.
3) Ladies, quit your never ending elliptical or treadmill sessions. Try HIIT. High intensity interval training. Basically, spurts of intense activity followed by rest intervals. Sessions are short, sweaty and brutal.
The best bit, its not like your clinical long drawn run on the gym treadmill, peering into the petite plasma placed on the wall, Get to a park do a sprint session. Pick a distance, 50 or 100 meters and dash through it full blast. Record your time. Rest and repeat.
4) Screw the six pack.
Yes you heard me right. Instead carve your core. Crunches are useless they really are, start planking a total body exercise that makes you stronger inside out.
5) Forget about looking a certain way. Forget spot fat fixes, endless crunches and isolation exercises. Chuck the weighing scale, stop mapping yourself with a measuring tape after each workout. Just focus on eating clean, working out hard (preferably thrice a week) and sleeping eight hours a day. Do all of this and I promise you in 30 days from now you will look much better naked.
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